When the news came out at noon on Monday that Pope Benedict XVI would step down at precisely 8 p.m. on Feb. 28, it came as a surprise to more than just the Catholic faithful and priests around the world. "It was a bolt out of the blue," said Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals.

snip

But it seems likely that the move also came out of the realization that he no longer had complete control of the church. During the so-called "Vatileaks" affair last year, secret documents and letters were smuggled out of the Vatican over a period of months. They bore witness to intrigue and a shocking power struggle among top Catholic cardinals. Pope Benedict XVI has been unable to put a stop to it. Nor was he able to reform the Vatican Bank following a series of obscure deals apparently aimed at money laundering.

snip

But Benedict, who holds a Ph.D. in theology, has also had difficulties addressing other issues facing the church. He has proven unable to adequately deal with the seemingly unending series of sex abuse scandals that has shaken Catholic institutions around Europe and the world in recent years. Furthermore, his hard-line stance on faith has done little to slow down the widening cleft between today's believers and the Vatican. Huge numbers have left the church in recent years, particularly in well-off dioceses in Europe and the United States as Rome has become increasingly inflexible in its orthodoxy under Ratzinger's leadership.

snip

Lombardi added that the pope did not expect that a schism would result from his decision to step down -- hardly the kind of statement that will resole doubts about the crisis now facing a deeply fractious church leadership.

No doubt his memos as a cardinal to the bishops to protect the pedophile priests by moving them to new parishes, rather than to turn them into local law enforcement authorities, was a very great burden on his mind, and soul. I suspect that the assistant, who he fired and had jailed, had obtained documents detailing the cardinal’s sins. Just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I suppose the former assistant will “sell” the documents to the highest bidder.

This is a bad precedent. I wish the Holy Father had stayed in office until he was at least bedridden, comatose or dead. Just because your health is not at 100 percent, is no reason for a Pope or a monarch like Queen Elizabeth to vacate the office. Give them a right hand man to help carry out strenuous diplomatic trips like the Queen has Will, Kate, Harry.

Hmmmmmmmm. Do you think Obama has a shot?
__________________________________________________________

The media are salivating.....hoping for a ‘black one’....who’s ‘for abortion’ and ‘contraception’. Any other time they could CARE LESS. Just want someone who thinks like THEY do and that the Catholic Church should ‘move forward’.

I’m not Catholic, but it makes me sick how they control the narrative on what Christianity/Catholicism should be.

Ultimately......they want to turn the entire Catholic and Protestant faiths into a Unitarian vision. New-age nothing-ness. Void of biblical foundations.

I am surprised that Rome would go looey that easily... what with all the tradition they keep... but again anything’s possible. It is a devilish world. They ain’t going to listen to Barack Obama, though.

12
posted on 02/11/2013 8:33:48 PM PST
by HiTech RedNeck
(How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)

Some Southern Baptists still seem to be OK... but I just got a leaflet from one that seemed to have a good, even powerful spirit about it... and it’s almost apologetic in tone. And I don’t mean Christian apologetics. What happened to a gospel of which we are not ashamed?

16
posted on 02/11/2013 8:48:26 PM PST
by HiTech RedNeck
(How long before all this "fairness" kills everybody, even the poor it was supposed to help???)

The problem is the Media, HiTech. The MSM. The message. The mantra. The meme. They control everything......and the people behind it. They decide what is ‘cool’ and what is not. I was watching NCIS this afternoon.......and lo and behold.....a series about a football team that had questions about gay players. It’s PUSH, PUSH, PUSH. Agenda, agenda, agenda.

I don’t think one has to be a Cardinal to become Pope. It’s rather like one doesn’t have to be a Congressman to become Speaker of the House or one doesn’t have to be a lawyer to become a SCOTUS justice.

the reason Ratzinger was so unpopular is that he pressured the bishops to remove the priests. The “memo” cited was taken out of context, and was about a bishop who didn’t follow the procedure for removing a priest (who was no longer in parish work, but the bishop was trying to make a splashy “see I am taking care of it” headline to cover up his own sexual picadillos).

Look at Mahoney: All Catholics knew he was covering up for years, but he was popular in the Mainstream media for backing the “correct” causes, and he had friends in the Vatican bureaucracy that covered up for him. That was an open secret, for when he tried to get the Vatican to “remove” Mother Angelica and let the bishops take over her TV station (after she criticized his bad theology), the Vatican sent an “investigation” to check her out, but John Paul II backed her and stopped it.

The truth is that a lot of career types who are atheists are kicked upstairs into the offices, and many of them are doing their best to remake the church into something more politically correct. .

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